In many aspects of commerce and life it would be an advantage for two or more parties to compare what they know without actually revealing that information to one another. As an example, suppose you and your neighbor want to see who earns more money: can you do this without revealing anything about your salaries? There are many other such examples. Suppose you want to buy a house but the owner has not listed a price. Can you tell if the most you are willing to offer is more than the least the owner is willing to accept without telling the owner anything more about what you will pay and without the owner revealing anything other than that what they will accept is less than the most you will pay?
Suppose a sports team wishes to trade players with another team. Can the two teams first determine if they have any matches, i.e., players the first team would let go and that the second team would like to hire, without disclosing any player names?
Suppose two parties want to bid (once) on something but neither wants to lose “first mover advantage”, i.e., if one bids first, the other can offer just a minimal amount more and win the bidding process. Without recourse to any third party can the two parties share bids (electronically) without having either gain such an advantage?
In the field of chemistry, if two parties have sets of molecules of known composition, can either of the parties tell (a) whether any of the molecules are the same, or (b) how similar the two collections might be, without revealing any additional information about what the molecules actually are? For instance, two companies might want to compare their respective collections, for example for the purpose of enriching both by trading compounds, but without revealing what they actually have outside of those to be traded. In another scenario, a small biotechnology company has made some compounds that are active against a disease that it wants to license to a large pharmaceutical company: once the larger company sees the biotechnology company's compounds they might just go make them themselves. Even if the biotechnology company has applied for patent protection, the large company may have enough resources to work around it. Could the smaller company convince the large company that these compounds are quite different from any they have in-house without revealing the identity of their own compounds?
In another variant on this situation, suppose a company knows a series of properties for each molecule in its dataset, e.g., the activity against a standard series of kinases. Can the company examine another company's collection and discover molecules that have a similar profile but with different chemical composition, without either side revealing either their molecules or their kinase profiles? Or vice versa: can the first company find molecules in the second company's collection that are chemically similar to those of interest in its own dataset, but have radically different kinase profiles?
Finally, much effort is made within the pharmaceutical industry to build predictive models based on measured or calculated properties of known molecules. Can such models be shared with others outside the company without revealing either the molecules or their measured properties? Can two companies combine their data to build a model they could both use that is better than either could make individually, again without any release of primary, i.e., molecular structure data?
Accordingly, there is a need for a method of permitting two parties to a transaction to share proprietary data securely in a way that only reveals sufficient information for each party to decide whether to move forward with the transaction, and doesn't compromise either parties' data.
The discussion of the background herein is included to explain the context of the technology. This is not to be taken as an admission that any of the material referred to was published, known, or part of the common general knowledge as at the priority date of any of the claims found appended hereto.
Throughout the description and claims of the instant application, the word “comprise” and variations thereof, such as “comprising” and “comprises”, is not intended to exclude other additives, components, integers or steps.